.
I see that the BBC are hailing the news that Iran has decided to stop executing juveniles. Amnesty have also been welcoming of the Mullahs alleged decision. I suppose with all the hanging of homosexuals and stoning to death of adulterers the Iranian judiciary may be too busy to hang the kids. Not that you’d know the latter from the BBC report. Great to see the enthusiasm to give Iran a pat on the back. Just wait until Israel does the inevitable to see the BBC’s love-in with the Mullahs shine through.
In contrast, non-BBC report on Iran:
“Iran to hang a man for the crime of being a Christian”
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/023064.php
But what is it going to do instead? Cut their bits off?
Something grisly no doubt.
…back in the real world, one free of rightwing paranoia, objective observers will judge the article for what it is – a simple report on a statement from a human rights organisation.
Iran have stopped executing juveniles.
This is a good thing.
Amnesty say so.
BBC report this.
BBC loves Iran.
???
Surely this is a good thing, that should be welcomed? Iran is moving in the right direction (on this at least). No?
Next up the end to weregeld …
The article isn’t biased, BTW.
I see the BBC were biging up some pointless story about Iran having the biggest sandwich in history?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7675281.stm
Why isn’t the leftie media up in arms at all those dead Ostrichs’ then?
Presumably those poor animals died the same way every other animal is slaughtered in the Muslim world (including human non Muslims) by having it’s throat cut whilst very much alive and not stunned?
BenM | 17.10.08 – 6:11 pm | #
magic dave | 17.10.08 – 6:13 pm | #
….are one and the same idiot, obviously.
Do you really think that if the subject were America being praised for abolishing the death penalty for example, that the BBC would manage to stop themselves from adding:
“But our correspondents pointed out that some states still treat juveniles as adults…”
..or some other such tosh. To focus entirely on the positive of Iran stopping the execution of children without pointing out that this is a mere drop in the ocean when it comes to their overall human rights record is just disgraceful journalism and given how Al-Beeb reports the Islamic world in general compared to, say, the US, we can comfortably say this article is part of a wider pattern of bias.
I’m sorry, why are we on the petty namecalling, Jason? If you want to show the BBC has bias, please attack my reasoning not me.
Of course the BBC could and possibly should have mentioned the terrible human rights abuses in Iran. But they didn’t choose to in this instance, choosing instead to just post some facts. I assume their reasoning is along the lines that the context can be seen in the “see also” links.
I see why you can think this is a poor journalistic decision, but I fail to see how you can see this as any kind of pro-Iran bias or condoning of their regime!
Jason: ‘Do you really think that if the subject were America being praised for abolishing the death penalty for example, that the BBC would manage to stop themselves from adding:
“But our correspondents pointed out that some states still treat juveniles as adults…” ‘
I don’t know, possibly. I don’t think they would since it wouldn’t be relevant to the story. I also don’t think creating hypotheticals helps your argument.
I just want to point out a gory detail which many will not be aware of but says much about the Iranian mindset.
Hanging in the west is carried out by the ‘trapdoor method’ this makes the victim drop a certain distance so the weight of the victim falling enables the rope to snap the neck at the base of the brain leading to massive injury to the spinal cord as it joins the brain stem, this causes near instant death in almost every case where the job is done well.
The Iranian method is different, the victims are placed in a noose attached to a crane arm, the crane lifts the victim slowly above the ground, there is no abrupt snapping of the neck, the victim is slowly strangled by their own weight against the rope, needless to say it is painfull and in most cases excrutiating, victims take minutes to die in agony sometimes for twenty odd minutes, the aim is to strip the victim of dignity and cause as much pain as possible and the BBC covered imadinnerjacket as he spewed out his ‘peace and love’ speech at the UN, had the BBC the moral courage it would have interposed film of a victim dangling and dying in agony or the stoning to death of innocent women during the Iranian leaders sick speech!
The Iranians are barbaric cruel heathens, they enjoy others pain, they laugh and cheer, giggle and joke as our distant dark age relatives did hundreds of years ago!
The BBC loves the Iranians and swoons over its ‘cafe society’ and bends over backwards to portray it as a civilised nation picked on by the US, they even look the other way when young Gays are strangled to death in public and yet many gays work for the BBC, what price free access to Iran eh?
Hallo, life-long Tory voter. Do you still support the Conservatives? Do you have reason to support the Conservatives? Perhaps you are as confused as I am by the BBC’s anti-Cameron spin when his policies are little different from NuLab?
David, I have to say that your point is valid , however, the comedic delivery is unsuitable to highlight such barbaric practices by the Iranians, and of course the cowardly way that the BBC chooses to report such crimes.
Surely the BBC qualifies for this?:
“Useful Idiots in Khatami Spin Conference in Tehran”
http://azarmehr.blogspot.com/2008/10/useful-idiots-in-khatami-spin.html
David – this is just straight reporting, not “hailing”. Is illustrating the story with that picture part of the “pat on the back”?
wwl,
Listen – the BBC is so slavishly excited by the Iranians that it’s only a matter of time to Ahmadinejad appears on Children in Need.
Maastricht,
A little bit of humour helps the medicine go down but I do take your point. I favour the bombing of Iranian nukes asap and consider Iran the nexus of the axis of evil. So beneath the humour…
This is the sort of programme which BBC World news channel is planning in Iran, with Ahmadinejad approval:
{Extract, from Iranian government controlled ‘Tehran Times’:
“the documentary ‘A Taste of Iran’ was authorized by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.”
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=180224
Allan@Aberdeen: I totally agree with you. My point has been that for too long the Tories have been supporting Blair and Broon over their failed policies.
The vile war in Iraq and the mess over the banks meltdown being two where the Tories get no benefit from supporting the Government but get the blame when it goes wrong.
Here’s a clue. The Tories are the “Official opposition”. That should really tell people what their job is.
,
“Listen – the BBC is so slavishly excited by the Iranians that it’s only a matter of time to Ahmadinejad appears on Children in Need.”
This has passed me by entirely. I can’t really think of any Iran-love stories on the BBC site, although I perhaps I tend not to poke around that area of the world news. Do you have any examples of them condoning the Iranian government’s actions?
Martin makes a good point about the Tories being a lame opposition. It does seem to be the way with the past 30 years or so that we’re let down almost as much by poor opposition as by the actual government!
How would anyone know whether they stop executing juveniles or not ?
Maybe the BBC , in its tradition of fearless investigative journalism could send a team to Iran to monitor the situation.
Wow, only this website could whine that a report on kids no longer being executed shows a liberal bias.
ipreferred:
magicdave:
Do you ever remember an instance where the BBC actually reported the fact that Iran hung juveniles?
No?
Well shut up then.
In reporting context, this is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The BBC are only interested in reporting the barbarism of Iran when they allege to be changing it. Thereby proving their bias.
Kill the Beeb
I think you “blown magicdave oot the water” as we say in Scotland.
I doubt we shall hear from him again on this subject.
Thanks
David Vance said: “I favour the bombing of Iranian nukes asap”
YES!!! :+:
Yeah, what’s the URL of “the in depth analysis of the barbarity of the iranian regime” again?
I humbly suggest this link rather blows your argument oot of the water.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/5217424.stm
whitewineliberal | 18.10.08 – 6:22 pm
has the bbc ever shown a stoning?
or reported on one?
I can see why people might think this is just straight reporting, taken in isolation. But the BBC often insists that we should look at its reporting over time before concluding it is biased. Anyone who has watched the BBC reporting on the death penalty in the US will observe the BBC in campaign mode, despite the fact that executions in Iran dwarf those in the US and despite the barbaric nature of Iranian executions. It will interview opponents of the death penalty and home in sympathetically on demnstrations by supporters of the condemned. We don’t see the BBC doing the same in Iran. Given the restrictions on reporting in a country run by psychotic, bloodthirsty Mullahs, the BBC could still do some actual reporting and try to ascertain if there is a movement against the death penalty there.
Instead we get the timid, obedient stuff dished out in the article at the link, and no doubt it was only reported because Amnesty International, one of the BBC’s favourite bedfellows, issued a statement.
The BBC is not only timid in its approach to Iran, it is sometimes even adulatory; Owen Bennet Jones did a World Service interview a while back with one of Iran’s vice presidents – a woman who had been one of the leaders of the US Embassy siege. The airwaves were positively crackling with the chemistry between them. Some ‘interview’. It was more like an adoring fan fulfilling his life’s ambition to talk to Madonna.
And we had World Have Your Say allowing an Iranian “diplomat’ and ‘academic’ to spew their hatred of Israel (read ‘Jews’) uninterrupted by the BBC host.
Iran is run by a bunch of cold-blooded murderers, who terrorise their own people as well as others, all in the name of their ‘religion’. But I have yet to see the BBC treating them with a tenth of the disrespect they show to democratic America.
I hope that clears things up for the cynics here.
just IMAGINE the MSM coverage – including the BBC – if George W. Bush introduced “hanging by crane”….
I meant to add that David Vance is quite correct about this:
Just wait until Israel does the inevitable to see the BBC’s love-in with the Mullahs shine through.
When Hezbollah attacked Israel and killed and kidnapped the soldiers, the BBC itself swung into attack mode – not against Hezbollah, naturally, but against Israel with Middle East “editor” Jeremy Bowen yelling “war crimes” at Israel when the smoke from the first bombs had hardly cleared.
No doubt the BBC will do the same if Israel goes on the offensive against Iran. That is how low the BBC has sunk.
archduke | 18.10.08 – 7:11 pm,
Great minds think alike and post comments at the same time!
Bryan | 18.10.08 – 7:11 pm |
But I have yet to see the BBC treating them with a tenth of the disrespect they show to democratic America.
But…but….Islam is a minority religion in the UK, so the BBC must treat Muslims worldwide with kid gloves. Or something like that.
whitewineliberal | 18.10.08 – 6:22 pm,
Yes, I remember that the BBC reported that particular horrific case. It was all over the blogosphere and elsewhere. I guess the BBC felt obliged to join in and cover it. Still, I take your point that it’s fair article.
Meanwhile, every time I try to mention, in a BBC forum like Have Your Say, the fact of Iran arming, training and funding terror groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad for the express purpose of murdering Jews, I get censored.
David Preiser (USA) | Homepage | 18.10.08 – 8:00 pm,
I think that the BBC has been infiltrated to a serious extent by those who are sympathetic to radical Islam ,whether or not they themselves are Muslims.
bryan – beyond bollocks, frankly. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
bryan – beyond bollocks, frankly. extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
whitewineliberal | 18.10.08 – 11:13 pm
“Don’t Panic – I’m Islamic”
WWL at first I thought you were a Beeboid. But now I don’t think you even have the Branes. Your ill-informed remarks are becoming irritating. Go back over the monthly archives —-> and come back, if you must, when you’ve done your homework.
Archduke – Stoning in iran –
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7516238.stmIt's
Anything else the BBC refuse to cover in Iran?
Bryan | 18.10.08 – 7:11 pm |
Exactly, but as this site does not list the other instances of bias the article stands in a vaccuum.
The article itself is not biased but the overall reporting is. Using an instance of unbiased reporting to highlight bias, is IMHO, playing into the BBCs hands.
Clicking the ‘pro Iran’ label brings up one other story.
If all this site wants to do is spout off then fine, but if you want a concerted campaign against the BBC bias (as I would) then the evidence has to be much stronger and brought together so that people like WWL et al cannot simply dismiss it.
hear hear to that. this site’s argument is weakened by seeing bias where it doesn’t exist.
Yes, excellent idea.
Let’s bring in a rule that every allegation of bias must be accompanied by a recapitulation of every relevant retrospective post on each topic there has ever been to save WWL looking at the archives.
That would be considerate and would ensure no-one could accuse any of us seeing bias where it doesn’t exist.
What i meant is that by seeing bias in everything, the case is weakened. This iran blog is a good example of where, in a search for today’s example of bias, a weak and easily rebutted case is made, thereby exposing the central argument up to ridicule Targets need to be better chosen.
The late lamented Daily Ablution did a much more convincing job of nailing media bias and folly.
whitewineliberal:
A two and a half year old report about one 16 year old on an obscure section of the BBC website hardly constitutes being ‘blown out of the water.’ Nor does it ‘raise the public’s awareness of such an important issue’ as the BBC are so often keen to claim.
The BBC has never made such reporting on juvenille execution in Iran accessible to it’s audience because of it’s love fest with Iran. Burying one report on it’s website serves the very purpose that you have used it for…
So that some time in the future, an apologist such as yourself can come up and say “The BBC not report on the slaughetr of juvenilles in Iran? Never! Take a look at this.”
If this is the best a massive news orginasation can do to highlight such an important issue, then by your own defence, you are proving how utterly useless they are. Or do you believe that such an issue isn’t important enough to have proper news time wwl?
Anyway, it was a waste of the hour you must have spent trawling through the BBC archives. Please try harder.
By the way my spelling was appalling on that last post. When will Vance get himself a proper forum, so you can edit your postings?
KtB:
If he put up an edit device, we can’t see who has been to the pub. I’m seven hours behind, and by two in my afternoon certain poster’s spelling is entertaintment. As I am sure mine is when you get up in the morning 🙂
Well what do you know;
Iran youth hangings ‘to continue’
A senior judicial figure in Iran has cast doubt on reports that Tehran will stop executing juveniles.
Deputy prosecutor general Hossein Zebhi told a newspaper that under Sharia law only a murder victim’s family could commute a death sentence.
He had suggested last week that judges were being told to stop imposing the death penalty on young offenders.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7680843.stm
Alot of liberal illuminati would also like to pat them on the back. We shouldn’t praise the people who are at war with us. That’s so far left!